Afghan villagers say airstrike kills 9 civilians

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan 
An overnight airstrike by international forces killed nine civilians, including at least three children, villagers said Thursday. Afghan authorities said they had no reports of civilian deaths.

The incident illustrates the confusion and blame that regularly result from night raids and airstrikes in Afghanistan and threaten U.S.-led efforts to curb the Taliban.

In Kabul, the head of the U.N. mission warned that Afghanistan cannot count on international support indefinitely unless the government tackles corruption and bad governance.

Residents of Korkhashien village drove the bodies to the governor's office in the nearby provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, and AP footage and photos showed at least two children among the dead.

Helmand provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi confirmed an airstrike in Korkhashien, but said eight Taliban militants were killed while hiding out in a compound.

Sgt. Angela Eggman, a U.S. spokeswoman for NATO forces, said she was aware of an incident in the area and it was being investigated.

Villager Abdul Rashin said the people were killed while harvesting corn in their fields.

The convoy of vans and station wagons from Korkhashien drove from the governor's office to a central market, where the villagers shouted blame at both President Hamid Karzai and his international allies.

"Death to Karzai! Death to the foreigners!" they yelled as passers-by looked through the car windows at the blanket-covered corpses. The villagers had propped open the rear doors of the cars to show off the bodies, and young boy on a bicycle stopped to peer in.

Though NATO forces have retooled their mission to focus on protecting the population – and have been issued new rules for airstrikes aimed at reducing civilian casualties – it is often difficult to distinguish militants from civilians in areas where the Taliban live among the people and often grew up in the villages they hide out in.

In eastern Khost province, several hundred people demonstrated Thursday against an overnight raid that killed a resident of Baramkhil village. Walishah Hamat, head of the Mandozayi district government, said the dead man was innocent.

NATO forces said the man was a militant who was killed when Afghan and international forces were pursuing an insurgent leader who had been recruiting foreign fighters to the area.

More than eight years into the Afghan war, NATO forces are still struggling to fight off the Taliban movement and win the trust of the people they are defending.

NATO forces often struggle in the parallel propaganda war, even though Taliban attacks have killed many more civilians. Late Wednesday, a Taliban rocket killed five civilians when it hit a family's house, said Gov. Jamaldin Bader of Nuristan province.

A fraud-marred presidential election this summer has also weakened support for the Karzai government among its international allies.

Karzai was declared the winner of the presidential race this week after his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from a runoff that he said could not be free and fair.

Kai Eide, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, issued a stern warning to Karzai on Thursday, saying it was imperative that his new administration reform and crack down hard on corruption or risk losing the support of countries that have been providing Afghanistan with funds and with foreign troops to establish security.